


Never Easy

by devereauxing



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Physical Abuse, Tarsus IV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-22 06:14:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3718162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devereauxing/pseuds/devereauxing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was grief that made her think, in the dead of the night, that she could have had another baby but there had only been one George.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Easy

Winona said something to the nurse, three weeks after returning to Earth. Sam had been sent to play in the games room happily, and while the nurse was cooing over Jim’s bright blue eyes and tickling his feet to his delighted gurgles she’d plucked up the courage.

“I think I blame him.”

The nurse scooped the baby off of the blanket on the floor and stood to match Winona’s height, Jim held against her shoulder as her face twisted with pity.

“Oh, darling. You know George would never have left you if he’d had any choice,” she was a kindly woman, getting on in years. She’d help deliver Sam, and been there for all the first time parenting jitters that had accompanied him.

“Not George,” Winona corrected. “Jim. I think I blame Jim for what happened to George.”

Nurse Cutler took a step towards her, hand hovering in Winona’s direction. Jim squalled against her shoulder briefly but settled before she managed to come up with an appropriate response.

“You’re just over emotional at the moment, Winona,” she took another step closer and let her hand rub Winona’s arm. “Everything’s all twisted up. You lost your husband and gained a son in the very same day, you’re just displacing your emotions. That’s all.” She hesitated.

“You wouldn’t hurt Jim, would you?”

Winona jumped slightly, her eyes wide and shook her head, “Of course not! He’s my son.” _George’s son_ , she thought.

Cutler let out a sigh, and smiled, “Then there’s nothing to worry about. You’ll be just fine, you’re grieving. It’s a difficult process, made harder by a newborn, I’m sure.”

She held out Jim to his mother, who took him readily. Winona swallowed and cradled him, looking down at his sleeping face. He was such a gorgeous baby. Downy blond hair and the brightest blue eyes she’d ever seen. His daddy’s chin and eyebrows, she could already tell.

His mouth sucked on empty air, and she slipped her pinky between her lips instead.

Looking up she saw the nurse watching her warmly, and swallowed back her arguments.

She loved her son, she did. He was a gorgeous baby, and George had died for him. This was grief. It was grief that made her think he was selfish when he cried. She knew, logically, that he cried because he was hungry, because he was wet, because Sammy had woken him up from his nap before he was ready.

(But what did he have to cry about, really? He hadn’t lost the most important part of himself to the darkest realms of the galaxy and been left with two sons. He didn’t miss his daddy, didn’t not quite understand what ‘dead’ meant but know he could never see his hero again.)

It was grief that made her think, in the dead of the night, that she could have had another baby but there had only been one George.

“Mom!” Sammy came barreling into the room, and she yanked her pinky out of Jim’s mouth. Immediately he woke and began wailing.

“Mommy, look I found’a spaceship in my box we can play Starfleet! Can we?” Sammy was beaming, holding out toy spaceship. He loved playing Starfleet. _Just like his daddy,_ she thought proudly. George had regaled her bump with stories of brave George Jr the Starfleet Captain when she’d been pregnant with him, and continued the trend once he’d been born.

Jim continued screaming in her arms, and helplessly she looked towards Nurse Cutler who hurried over to take him from her. “Of course, baby!” She said, rushing over to take his hand and letting him lead her out the room.

“I’ll just get him settled and put him in his bassinet, Winona!” Cutler called from the living room, and took the silence as an acquiesce. In the games room, Winona told Sam all about the stars, and how if he looked really hard he’d find his daddy in them.

-

“Mom?”

Winona sighed and turned from the sink, and settled her eyes on the doorframe.

“Can I take a cake into school for my birthday tomorrow?” Jim asked, worrying at a hole in his pants. Winona kept her eyes on the doorframe next to his head, and pursed her lips.

“I don’t think that would be appropriate, Jim,” she said, before turning back to the dishes.

He scuffed his shoe against the floor, the rubber shuddering across the wooden finish unevenly, “Oh.”

Winona closed her eyes and settled her hand on the counter edge to lean against, ready for him to argue. He always argued, he was never easy.

“It’s just. Cathopeii took in cupcakes for his birthday last week, and his species doesn’t even celebrate birthdays,” he hesitated. “I didn’t get to take in any last year, either.”

Sam snorted from the dining table where he was supposed to be finishing his math homework, Winona shot him a stern look. He slumped back into his chair and looked back down at his books. In her periphery, Jim’s posture also slumped, as if accepting what the answer was going to be.

She frowned.

_George would’ve never given up._

She took a deep breath.

_George is dead._

It didn’t abate the sudden burst of anger she’d felt at Jim’s resigned stance, though. He should fight, like George. George didn’t die for his son to give in at the slightest opposition, did he?

“And do you remember why you weren’t allowed to take cupcakes last year, James?” She asked, slightly cold. As she turned to face him again, she saw him shrink backwards.

“It’s,” he paused. “It’s not just my birthday.”

“Exactly,” she said. “It’s not just your birthday.”

Jim sighed and nodded, glum. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

Winona bit her lip, her anger evaporating slowly. She’d been overly harsh, it wasn’t Jim’s fault.

(It’s not Jim’s fault. It’s not Jim’s fault.

You love your son. You love your son

George would still be dead, even if Jim wasn’t here.

It’s not Jim’s fault. It’s not Jim’s fault.

George is gone, and Jim is here.

You loved your husband more. You _love_ your husband more.)

Jim walked off, back up the stairs to his room and Sam broke his silence.

“He knew what the answer was gonna be, Mom. He shouldn’t have asked, it wasn’t fair on you.” She wanted to laugh, what was?

“He just wants a birthday, Sam,” she said wearily.

Sam scoffed, “He hasn’t had one before, why’d he need one now?” She flinched. “He knows about Dad.”

-

When he was 6, Jim had run into her bedroom without warning, crying. She’d dropped to her knees and held him to her chest, asking frantically what was wrong. Sam had loped into the room just after, streaming out apologies. Not to Jim, but to her.

“I didn’t know he thought it was literal, I swear, Mom. He just, he’s always asking about who Dad was, where he was, kid stuff like that, and I always told him he was in the sky. But he thought he was an actual _star_. I didn’t know he hadn’t figured it out, he’s such a baby.”

Jim had pushed away then and launched himself at Sam, still sobbing but armed with sharp elbows and clenched fists.

“How’m I s’posed to know who my Dad is if I’ve never seen him,” he’d raged with ragged breaths and hiccuping sobs. “You told me he was a star, I thought he was a star.”

Sam was laughing at him, up until he got a well placed knee to the nose.

Winona wrestled them apart, and after telling Sam to pinch the bridge of his nose and to go find the medkit, she’d rounded on Jim. “You don’t ever hit your brother, Jim,” her eyes not quite meeting his, drifting to his forehead instead. “I never want to see that kind of behaviour again, I’m so disappointed in you. You can spend the rest of your night thinking about what you’ve done in your room.”

He’d gaped at her, eyes still streaming tears, for a moment before nodding. Mumbling apologies and rubbing at his eyes he’d scurried off to his room. Sam had come back in, shoving past Jim, grumbling and lugging the medkit.

“I hate him, I wish he’d never been _born_ ,” he’d whispered harshly, dropping the medkit on her bed. Winona grabbed his arm and turned him to face her, “I don’t ever want to hear you say that again, young man!”

Sam had stared up at her, eyes wide and frightened until she loosened her grip. In his eyes she could see what he wasn’t saying, plain as day.

_Why not? You wish it too._

-

The thing was, Winona did love her son. She’d kill for him, if she had to.

She’d have weeks, sometimes a month, where she did her best to treat him as if he were the treasured son he was. She’d push George to the back of her mind, smile at Jim’s report cards and aptitude tests, and look at the bridge of his nose rather than his forehead or a nearby object.

She’d give him hugs, make his favourite food.

Then something would happen, something small. Something stupid, something not even worth getting angry over. A broken plate, a badly timed joke. Or one time, he’d gotten sick just before she’d been meant to catch a shuttle to a conference.

And then it was over. Her stamina would run out, George would come creeping back. She’d hold them next to each other, and Jim would be found wanting.

Raging against the universe, she’d sob under her covers at night. She’d pray to a God she didn’t wholly believe in, to just give her the choice. To let her choose her husband. Her husband who would hold her at night, would hold her hand and eagerly point out pieces of the quadrant they hadn’t yet visited. George, who’d rubbed ointment on her burns from Engineering, who hadn’t needed anything from her but _her._

Jim would be left blinking up at her as the switch was flipped, just as he’d grown comfortable.

And she knew it was cruel, knew she had become someone she didn’t like. Knew she was the kind of mother she’d never understood. Who could look at her child and hate him with the kind of passion she’d thought reserved for the worst kind of living being.

She hated her son more than any other being in the universe, barring the Romulan who had taken George from her perhaps (only, they’d become entangled in her mind. Jim and Nero, they were the same. They’d stolen George from her, those two).

But she loved him too, she was proud of his achievements. She watched him grow and imagined how proud George would be too. Then she’d remember George, and grow cold once more.

Jim was a tightrope, the human embodiment of that famous thin line.

And Winona was forever terrified she was on the wrong side.

-

When Sam was 13 and Jim 9, Winona remarried. His name was Frank, and she did not love him.

Frank needed the financial support, was good with kids, and would look after the boys while she was in space. She needed to be among the stars, needed to be with George. She couldn’t stay with Jim, she didn’t trust herself. She was constantly terrified she was going to cross a line.

(This was the line, and she crossed it.)

Winona kissed Sam on the forehead, wiped a tear from his cheek and promised to be back in two years. Sam crossed his arms and frowned at the ground, scuffing his new trainers in the dirt by the shuttle station. Jim had smiled up at her and promised to be good. He surprised her with a hug, darting forward before she could stop him. She inhaled sharply, arms held limply by her sides, and he let go just as quickly.

Silently, she berated herself for not returning the embrace as Jim’s chin trembled. Before she could say anything, perhaps offer him a hug of her own, he looked back up (his eyes focussed somewhere on her cheek, she noted absently. When did that start? Why did it hurt?) and smiled again, jaw clenched and shoulders stiff.

Frank smirked at her from behind them, hands holding onto the boys shoulders, “You’ll miss your transport, Win. Not having second thoughts?”

She barely stopped herself from running to the shuttle.

-

Winona blinked uncomprehendingly at the vid console before pressing play again, fingers numb.

“Hey, Wi-,” Jim flinched, corrected himself. “Mom. Sorry, I know Sam calls usually, but. Sam’s, well, gone. He took off a few days ago, Frank smacked him a few too many times, I guess.”

She pressed pause. Jim’s eyes boring into hers for the first time since he was a toddler, his left one almost swollen shut. She didn’t understand. Sam had never said anything about Frank, nothing to make her think... not even when her mission got extended. Why wouldn’t Sam say anything, why wouldn’t Jim?

She pressed play again, “I’m pretty sure he’s gone to stay with Grandpa Kirk, so he’ll be fine. You’ll hear from him in a couple of days, I’m sure. Just thought I’d let you know. See you whenever you get back, I guess.”

-

Winona was back dirtside by the end of gamma shift.

Frank was out on his ass an hour later.

Jim just looked confused.

(“How could you think I knew, Jim?” She asked, angry tears streaming down her face as the cops walk out the door, sympathy in their eyes that she knew she didn’t deserve.

His left eye still looks terrible, and Tiberius had answered her vidcall looking fit to kill, demanding to speak to Jimmy, “Just let me speak to Jimmy, Winona. Put him on right now! Oh, God, Jimmy. Jimmy, you shoulda told me, boy.”

Jim shrugged nonchalantly, “He never really messed Sam about that much, usually just me.”

Winona momentarily forgot how to breathe.)

-

Starfleet was a military organisation, at the root of it. You couldn’t just leave to take care of your abused baby boys, not when you’d taken on a contract. She had another 6 months, then another 3 years after that.

Sam was fine, college started in the fall and Tiberius had already set up a room for him. Jim was the problem. Jim was always the problem.

Jim had driven George’s car into a quarry in her absence.

(Winona hated him)

Jim agreed to live on a colony planet with his aunt and uncle without a single complaint.

(Winona loved him)

-

During her next shoreleave, she visited Sam.

“You know he asked me once if Dad would’ve hated me if you two had died instead?” Sam said, halfway through a movie. Winona, half asleep and curled uncomfortably on his dorm bed, cocked her head confused.

“Before I left him with Frank,” and, God, she could hear the self-loathing there. She grabbed his hand, rubbing soothing circles with her thumb; no matter how many times she’d told him he’d done what he’d had to do, he didn’t believe her.

“Jim asked if Dad would’ve hated me like we hate him,” Winona flinched back, head making impact with the wall. “Of course he wouldn’t have hated you, baby,” she whispered, crawling up next to him to cradle his head to her chest. “He loved you, darling.”

“I said that and I believe it,” Sam said, voice gruff and muffled by her shirt. “But, I love Jim, Mom. I really do, but I hate him a little bit too.” He sounded so conflicted, so confused. “And… I don’t really know why. I didn’t think he knew, but. He did, he knows we- I, I mean I. He knows I hate him. I didn’t deny it.”

Winona blinked back tears and let Sam go, watching him scrub at his eyes.

“It’s okay, Sam,” She said, leaning back. “It’s okay. He knows you love him, too. He knows we love him. You haven’t done anything wrong. This isn’t your fault.”

Sam sighed, looking wearier than any boy only 17 had the right to look. Meeting her eyes easily (so very easily) he said, “Yeah, but it’s not his fault either.”

-

When they told her about Tarsus, she threw up. When she set her eyes on Jim, she felt guilty that she’d done even that.

He was just so _thin_ , surrounded by beds filled with other gaunt children, all of them hooked up to endless beeping machines.

“We can’t separate them just yet,” the Andorian doctor had explained, antennae twitching and hands wringing. “The other children, they’re rather emotionally dependent on your son. They’re saying he was a hero.”

Looking down at Jim, she wanted to scream at the doctor, _He’s not a hero, he’s a little boy._

Later, she did scream. She screamed and shouted at the admiralty, telling them they could shove the press up their collective asses if they think she’d let them get their hooks in her little boy. She threatened and bargained, reminded them just how much the public loved her. Loved the widow of George Kirk, loved his children.

The public wouldn’t think well of Starfleet using this tragedy and her son as a pressline.

-

When Jim got home, she lasted two months.

He’d been in the hospital for six months. He still wouldn’t talk, still hoarded food.

Two months at home is all she lasted and she knew, down at the bottom of her heart where she kept her deepest secrets, that she only lasted that long because that’s how long he was silent for.

He was a ghost. An emaciated ghost, who slept more than he did anything else.

But then he puts some more of the weight back on, and then he gets angry. At the world, at Starfleet, at her. Finally, truly angry at her.

Two months, and she was shouting, “Your father died for you!” As his eyes glinted with victory, and she realised he’d wanted this. He’d wanted her to break, to prove herself false once more.

Two months, and he was snarling, “Yeah, well we both wish it had been the other way ‘round, don’t worry.”

It was two months and thirteen days before the emancipation papers came through on her padd, and by then he was already gone. Six hours after that, she had a new posting on a ship.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in an hour at 3am after a mini kirk related breakdown on twitter so it's a bit (utterly) shit. i find winona (the whole kirk family in aos really) to be really interesting and this is kind of a scraping of my taking on what kirk family life was like. also formatting was being a bitch and, at 4:30am, im in no mood to deal with it.
> 
> 1/14/18: minor formatting and grammatical editing


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